The ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Black-and-White Version May Get Released on a Box Set Later This Year

According to director George Miller, the best version of Mad Max: Fury Road is the black and white version. Unfortunately, as he said, “people reserve that for art films now.” Miller was optimistic Warner Bros. would release his ideal cut in theaters, but a theatrical run for the Mad Max: Fury Road black-and-white version never happened. We will get to one day see Miller’s preferred cut, and possibly later this year with a brand new box set.

Below, learn more about the Mad Max: Fury Road black-and-white version and a double-dip actually worth purchasing.

Indiewire noticed that Amazon Germany has started accepting pre-orders for a new Mad Max box set, including all four films in the series. This Blu-ray collection features four new hours of bonus features, and not just including the newest additions for Fury Road. Included in the set is “the surreal black and white film version of Fury Road.”

Miller believes this version of the movie is more “authentic and elemental”:

The best version of ‘Fury Road’ was what we called a ‘slash dupe’: a cheap, black-and-white version of the movie for the composer. Something about it seemed more authentic and elemental. So I asked Eric Whipp, the [‘Fury Road’] colorist, ‘can I see some scenes in black and white with quite a bit of contrast?’ They looked great. So I said to the guys at Warners, ‘can we put a black-and-white version on the DVD?’ There wasn’t enough room. [It’ll end up] on another version with commentary and other features.

He described the cut as going “all the way out,” regarding the film’s post-apocalyptic aesthetic:

We spent a lot of time in DI (digital intermediate), and we had a very fine colorist, Eric Whipp. One thing I’ve noticed is that the default position for everyone is to de-saturate post-apocalyptic movies. There’s only two ways to go, make them black and white — the best version of this movie is black and white, but people reserve that for art movies now. The other version is to really go all-out on the color. The usual teal and orange thing? That’s all the colors we had to work with. The desert’s orange and the sky is teal, and we either could de-saturate it, or crank it up, to differentiate the movie. Plus, it can get really tiring watching this dull, de-saturated color, unless you go all the way out and make it black and white.

Not listed in the brand new special features is an audio commentary from George Miller, which was missing from the first home video release of Mad Max: Fury Road. The new box set comes out in Germany on September 29th. There’s no word on a domestic release date, but since Miller was confident we’d see his black and white version this year, it’s safe to presume we’ll also see this double dip released in the States soon.